"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is so! And thou wert bound to me In the long-vanished eld eternally! In the dark troubled tablets which enroll The past my Muse beheld this blessed scroll,— 'One with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... from the banks of the Garonne. Among other authors whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... been mine since those events Ruled the pulsation of my daily life: And now they are a vulgar chronicle, And gossiped over by the rudest tongues. A haunting song of old felicities Lured me, scarce consciously, down here to muse Upon my shattered dreams; safe from the roar Of interests in our grim metropolis, The beating heart of England and the world. Not seen by me, since on that wondrous night Her consolation came into my soul; Yet here again I stand beside her tomb— And here I muse, more wise and not ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... dreaminess that we always tried to combat, and he seems less able than before to turn his mind into any channel but the one immediately before him. He is most loving when roused, but infinitely more inclined to fall off into a muse. I am afraid you must have had a troublesome charge in him, judging by the uproar Harry makes about the difficulty of getting him safe from Paddington. It is good to see him and Harry together—the old schoolboy ways are so renewed, all bitterness so entirely forgotten, only Harry rages a little ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heart of Corydon, that he should not be put out of his farm, that putting off his shepherd's bonnet, he did her all the reverence that he might. But all this while sate Montanus in a muse, thinking of the cruelty of his Phoebe, whom he wooed long, but was in no hope to win. Ganymede, who still had the remembrance of Rosader in his thoughts, took delight to see the poor shepherd passionate, laughing at Love, that in all his actions was so imperious. At last, when she had noted ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... filled Susy with a wrath intensified by his having confided in her that when they were quietly settled in Venice he "meant to write." Already nascent in her breast was the fierce resolve of the author's wife to defend her husband's privacy and facilitate his encounters with the Muse. It was abominable, simply abominable, that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawn ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... they show you Falls Mountain, with the cairn erected by his tribe in 1735 to chief Waramaug, who wished to be buried there, so that, when he was cold and lonely in the other life, he could return to his body and muse on the lovely landscape that he so enjoyed. The will-o'-the-wisp flickered on the mountain's edge at night, and flecks of dew-vapor that floated from the wood by day were sometimes thought to be the spirit of the chief. He had a daughter, Lillinonah, whose story is related to Lover's Leap, on ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... angry blade A lane through heaps of slaughter'd Grecians made! And now by deeds still braver I'll evince, I am no less than Edward the Black Prince.— Give way, ye coward French:—" as thus he spoke, And aim'd in fancy a sufficient stroke To fix the fate of Cressy or Poictiers; (The Muse relates the Hero's fate with tears) He struck his milk-white hand against a nail, Sees his own blood, and feels his courage fail. Ah! where is now that boasted valour flown, That in the tented field so late was shown! Achilles weeps, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... progression on its predecessor. He is very fond of his Russians, and his readings of Tchaikowsky seem to me the most beautiful work he does. I do not love Tchaikowsky, but he draws me by, I suppose, the attraction of repulsion. The muse who guides the dreamings of the Russian artist is a sombre and heavy-lidded lady, but most sombre, I think, when she moves in the brain of the musician. Then she wears the glooms and sables of the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... left it so disgracefully. The king well knew the unfortunate chevalier for a man as destitute of modesty as merit; when therefore he saw his book upon the mantel-piece of my drawing-room, he said, 'So! you are the inspiring muse of the chevalier de la Morliere; I only warn you, when the day comes for him to be hanged, not to ask me to pardon him." "Be assured," replied I, "that I will never deprive the Place de Greve ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... meanings best, when we look back on them, how much of the understanding of them, and the drawing of all its sweetness out of each event in them, is entrusted to memory! And how negligent of a great means of happiness and strength we are, if we do not often muse on 'all the way by which God the Lord has led us these many years in the wilderness'! It is needful for Christian progress to 'forget the things that are behind,' and not to let them limit our expectations nor prescribe our methods, but it is quite as needful ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... rough betimes, he could be as gentle and tender as a maiden, and true to himself in both. He could fight monsters all day, and in the evening take his lute, gaze at the stars, sing psalms, and muse upon the clouds, the fields, the flowers, the birds, dissolved in melody and devotion. Feared by the mighty of the earth, the dictator and reprimander of kings, the children loved him, and his great heart was as playful among them as one of themselves. If he was harsh and unsparing upon hypocrites, ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... More, a man who, despite the bitterness inseparable from a persecuting age, was of most wonderful goodness as well as intellectual power. We first read over the memories of him preserved by Erasmus, Hoddesdon, Roper, Aubrey, his own namesake, and others. It is pleasant to muse over the past; pleasant to know that much of malice and bigotry has departed, to return no more, that the prevalence of a spirit which could render even Sir Thomas More unjust and, to seeming, cruel, is passing away. Though we do implicitly believe there would be no lack of great hearts, and brave ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Cicero and his brother assiduously cultivated this rhetorical art. When writing failed, however, acting rose, and the admirable performances of Aesopus and Roscius did much to keep alive an interest in the old works. Varius and Pollio seem for a moment to have revived the tragic muse under Augustus, but their works had probably nothing in common with this early but interesting drama; and in Imperial times tragedy became more and more confused with rhetoric, until delineation of character ceased to be an object, and declamatory force ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... I am so foolish and you are so wise, 'Tis the meaning your words so ill disguise. Alas! my prospects are sad enough: I had rather listen to speeches rough Than muse and meditate silently On the coming loss of my liberty. Sad hope to me can my future bring, Yet, while I may, I would prattle and sing, Though it only were to try and assuage The dreariness of ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... maiden aunts, The engraving and the singing muse, Follow, through all my favourite haunts, My ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... effect which I was far from anticipating; for example, that of the young girls. If I see you again at Dresden, I will tell you all about it; for I cannot do it justice in writing. How much I am indebted to you for your magnificent poem! I embrace you with the sincerest emotion, returning to your muse the laurels I owe her. God grant that you may be happy. Love him who loves you with infinite ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... live a life of incorrigible idleness; they have no need to maintain themselves; they just eat, and sit, and muse; everything is supplied to them, including their yellow robe and betel nut. Their religion ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... in their country's cause Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they deserve, Receive proud recompense. We give in charge Their names to the sweet lyre. The Historic Muse, Proud of the treasure, marches with it down To latest times; and Sculpture, in her turn, Gives bond in stone and ever-during brass To guard them and immortalize her trust. But fairer wreaths are due, though never paid, To those who, posted at the shrine ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... epic poem, and his early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was the passion ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Literature and Manners. He speaks of Glover's "Leonidas," Cibber's "Careless Husband," the poems of Mason, Gray, the two Whiteheads, "the nervous style, extensive erudition, and superior sense of a Corke; the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feeling of a Lyttelton." "King," he says, "shone unrivalled in Roman eloquence, the female sex distinguished themselves by their taste and ingenuity. Miss Carter rivalled the celebrated Dacier ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I began to hope she might remain and become my muse. You always vanish—and generally with ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of that scene attunes my soul to song, awaking any muse from the silence in which she has long slumbered. But the voice of the coy maiden is less melodious than of yore: she shies me for my neglect: and despite the gentlest courting, refusing to breathe ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... organ," which appears once a week, and take up the newspaper, which comes forth every day, morning and evening. Here you get the true proportion of things. Read your daily news-sheet—that which costs threepence or that which costs a halfpenny—and muse upon the impression it leaves. It may be that a few books are "noticed"; granting that the "notice" is in any way noticeable, compare the space it occupies with that devoted to the material interests ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... lordly crowd I muse, Which haunts the Royal festive hours, The day has come when I've put on The ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... day that the good men won. And, sitting, a Muse upon her mythical mountain, her decision must needs be one from which we may not appeal: and yet I wonder if she is ever bribed. Certainly the shrewd sense of Morano erred for once; for those for whom he had predicted victory, ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... may think but little on the subject of slavery—it has never troubled me one way or the other: but let him mark the records of the glorious battles of the Revolution; let him notice the Eagle of Liberty, and all the emblems of Independence, Freedom, and the rights of man; let him muse on the thoughts they awaken, and then behold the actualities of life around him. Suddenly the sharp rap of an auctioneer's hammer startles him, and the loud striking of the hour of twelve will divert his attention to the throng of men ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... I worn with cares and age, And just abandoning the ungrateful stage But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn, Whom I foresee to better fortune born, Be kind to my remains; and oh, defend Against your judgment your departed friend. Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue, But guard those laurels which ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... life in beautie, forme and hew, As if dead Art 'gainst Nature had conspir'd. Painter, sayes one, thy wife's a pretty woman, I muse such ill-shapt children thou hast got, Yet mak'st such pictures as their likes makes no man, I prethee tell the cause of this thy lot? Quoth he, I paint by day when it is light, And get my children in the ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... the poet in person is the relater. But he hides his own personality in that of the Muse he invokes; and offers himself to his auditors as the Voice only by which she speaks. She, the Muse, is thought to be throughout a faithful recorder; for she is supposed to have access to know all; and however marvellous may be the narrations, they are accepted with undoubting faith. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... suggest that Sir John should devote all that money he proposes to make by the aid of his familiar spirit—the ghost of Narcisse—to the building of a temple in honour of the tenth muse, the muse of cookery," said Mrs. Sinclair; "and what do you think, Sir John, of a name I dreamt of last night for your sauce, 'The New Century Sauce'? How ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... habitations,—and never did He set His sacred foot within a palace, save the palace of the High Priest where He was condemned to die. Much symbolic meaning did Cardinal Felix discover in this incident,—and often would he muse upon ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... to see my mither— She'll be weel acquant or this, Sair we'll muse at ane anither, 'Tween the auld word ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... considerable period she desired no higher pleasure than to drive about the crowded streets in a hansom cab. To her attentive eyes they were full of a strange picturesque life, and it is at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and incidents which this simple young lady from Boston found so entertaining. It may be freely mentioned, however, that whenever, after a round of visits in Bond Street and Regent Street, she was about ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... in private theatricals with Highnesses and Excellencies. On the whole it seems to have been a peaceful, idle, rather trivial time of sojourn among congenial people. He danced, he strolled, he wrote verses to little Miss Emily; in short, he enjoyed himself as a youngish man may, whether the muse is waiting for him, or some less high-flown customer. "I wish I could give you a good account of my literary labors," he wrote his sister after several months in Dresden, "but I have nothing to report. I am merely seeing, ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... forgotten sins, Or call the devotees of shame to prayer. And all the spaces of the midnight town Ring with appeal and sorrowful abuse. There some most lonely are: some try to crown Mad lovers with sad boughs of formal yews, And Titan women wandering up and down Lead on the pale fanatics of the muse. ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... and occasionally timid vacillation, read a most impressive lesson to aspiring minds infatuated by success, and regardless of moral or religious restraints. O that, in this age of insubordination, selfishness, and enterprise, a poet would arise, animated with Shakespeare's "Muse of fire," embody the events of those seventeen years of wo, and invest the detestable Regicide with the same terrible immortality which marks the murderous Thane in his progress from obedience and honour to supreme ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... misled by boyish affection, he deemed it 'just old enough,' 'a noble imitation.'* But the imitation can deceive nobody, and while literary imitators, as far as their efforts have reached us, were impotent to deceive, the popular Muse, of 1714-1730, was not attempting deception. Ballads of the eighteenth century were sarcastic, as in those on Sheriffmuir and in Skirving's amusing ballad on Preston Pans, or were mere doggerel, or were brief songs to old tunes. They survive in print, whether in flying broadsides ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... which can endure such fluting and piping among them is not likely soon to have its modest ear pleased by aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song. Perhaps I am then led on into meditation respecting the spiritual nature of the Tenth Muse, who invented this gracious instrument, and guides its modulation by stokers' fingers; meditation, also, as to the influence of her invention amidst the other parts of the Parnassian melody of English education. Then it cannot but occur to me ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the woman's full habit of speech was strong upon her and that one might no longer muse upon a caught trout—even one to weigh well up toward four pounds. So I remembered that I was supposed ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... change with Clancy — go a-droving? tell us true, For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome If you had a wife and children and a lot of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... "sech a business. Miss Sharp have a gone and run away with the Capting, and they're off to Gretney Green!" We would devote a chapter to describe the emotions of Mrs. Firkin, did not the passions of her mistresses occupy our genteeler muse. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... no fear of the result if Percival goes now, while his principles are strong and his imagination is not inflamed; but if we keep him here much longer against his bent, he will learn to brood and to muse, write bad poetry perhaps, and think the world withheld from him a thousand times more delightful than it is. This very dread of temptation will provoke his curiosity, irritate his fancy, make him imagine the temptation must be a very delightful thing. For the first time in my life, ma'am, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit and the Muse— Nothing refuse" ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... She would have come to me walking lightly out of the dim Algerian evening or bumped into me some morning in Piccadilly or peered curiously through my leaded pane at Oxford, whither I should undoubtedly have returned, one day, to muse away my middle age. I idled for a happy year there, twenty-odd years ago, while Roger was grinding away at the fantastic matter he called the Law, and liked it well. But fate had not decreed me for a conventional Englishman, which I should doubtless ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... so lightly, well-known spire, That minded me of many a pleasure gone, Of merrier days, of love and Islington; Kindling afresh the flames of past desire. And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on To the ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... with telling me, he could have wished I had rather turned my thoughts to the comic than the tragic muse; for tragedy was less fashionable, and consequently less profitable both to the house and the author, than comedy or opera. I sighed and answered, it was an ill proof of public taste, when it could receive greater pleasure from the unconnected scenes of an opera than from the fable, pathos, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... to listen to his words, could not help remarking with what brightened eyes he continued to speak and muse. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... one of the most poetical of trees, being consecrated to the Muse by the part which has been assigned it in many a scene of romance, and by its connection with events recorded in Holy Writ. It is invested with a poetical interest by its symbolical representation of sorrow in the pendulous character of its spray, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... real mantle of purple velvet embroidered with gold. By his side, and seated on a globe, was a tall female form dressed in white, with an open book in one hand, and in the other a wand, pointing towards the portrait. This figure was to represent the Muse of History:—may she one day cast a glance of friendly retrospection on the prototype of her pictured companion! A body of cavalry followed the car, and the carriages of the most distinguished inhabitants of the place closed the procession. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Army at Bothwell Bridge. A Cameronian muse was awakened from slumber on this doleful occasion, and gave the following account of the muster of the royal forces, in poetry nearly as melancholy ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... scarce reaches to Guerrabella's shoulder; her figure is fragile and dainty; and though her cheek lacks bloom, the lines are soft and graceful, and the face pensive and poetic. The mouth is small and well curved, and the air of repose that rests upon the imaginative brow resembles the Muse of Meditation. The serenity that is uniformly spread over her unique countenance is in strong contrast to the animated, vivacious features of her cousin. Celina's head is fashioned after a classic model, and the mass ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... excitable husband with much satisfaction and now answered his question: "Not a Hera—not a Muse—decidedly not. Hardly above the middle height, slightly made, but not small, black eyes, long lashes, dark straight eyebrows. I could hardly, like Orpheus, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... so cheerful and gay, Whose words ever fulsomely fall, Oh, pity your friend, who to-day Has become a Society's thrall. Allow me to muse and to sigh, Nor talk of the change that ye find; None once was more happy than I; But, alas! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... on and left me alone. Now that I am alone let me muse on my past life and hope it will be better only the schoolhouse boat was out. I think they or our boat will win. Nice seeing them row Gilks catches a crab'" (this was previous to Gilks's ejection from the boat). "'Entered chapel at 1 to 8. King was ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... a muse. Her question recurred to her; but it was hardly likely, she felt, that her little companion could enlighten her. Nora was a bright, lively, spirited child, with black eyes and waves of beautiful black hair; neither at rest; sportive energy and enjoyment in every ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... days of youth,—after the sap was gathered, and the fuel piled high beside the arch, then it was that we sat down by the blazing fire and watched it burn; heaped on the logs, filled up the kettle, and again sat down to muse, or talk, or read. If the wind whistled afar, the boiling-place was in a sheltered nook; if the rain poured down, or the snow-flakes fell without, we were protected by the sugar-house or shed; if the day was cold ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... fond, as they grow impotent. This, some years hence, our poet's case may prove; But yet, he hopes, he's young enough to love. When forty comes, if e'er he live to see That wretched, fumbling age of poetry, 'Twill be high time to bid his muse adieu:— Well may he please himself, but never you. Till then, he'll do as well as he began, And hopes you will not find him less a man. Think him not duller for this year's delay; He was prepared, the women were away; And ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... and the Teian muse, The Hero's harp, the Lover's lute, Have found the fame your shores refuse: Their place of birth alone is mute To sounds which echo further west Than your Sires' "Islands of ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... as the fruit of warlike deeds, The soldier bleed, the soldier bleeds, Calliope crowns heroic deeds, With immortality. From mere oblivion I reclaim The soldier's name, the soldier's name And write it on the roll of fame, The muse of fame ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... a Zone of flashing gold beneath His breast, and compass'd round about his brow With triple arch of everchanging bows, And circled with the glory of living light And alternations of all hues, he stood. 'O child of man, why muse you here alone Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old Which fill'd the Earth with passing loveliness, Which flung strange music on the howling winds, And odours rapt from remote Paradise? Thy sense is clogg'd ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... sat awhile in a muse, she asked me if there was not a place of Scripture which said Peter was at a tanner's house. I told her there was such a Scripture, and directed ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... there, though last not least, is Aetion; A gentler shepheard may nowhere be found; Whose Muse, full of high thoughts' invention, Doth ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... purest water. The student was in raptures, and after a brief survey of the garden, he cast a longing eye upon the woods which he so much wished to penetrate. On he walked, stopping occasionally to muse on the enchanting scene around him, when all at once he espied, on the lofty branches of an ash, a cuckoo! At the sight of this splendid bird, our Parisian sportsman felt his heart pit-a-pat and jump like a girl's in love; and without stopping any longer to admire the marvels of Nature, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... that receive the pollen as it falls. Abundant cleistogamous flowers (see blue violets and white wood sorrel) are borne on the runners late in the season. Bryant, whose botanical lore did not always keep step with his Muse, wrote of the yellow violet as the first spring flower, because he found it "by the snowbank's edges cold," one April day, when the hepaticas about his home at Roslyn, Long Island, had doubtless been ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... tendency to singing thus burst forth in their presence, and after trolling out a few Irish melodies, he succeeded in eliciting from them a sympathetic response in the shape of some lively French songs. The result proved most delightful to all concerned; and thereafter the muse of Ireland and the muse of France kept up a perpetual antiphonal song, which beguiled ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... I muse among these silent fanes Whose spacious darkness guards your dust; Around me sleep the hoary plains That hold your ancient wars in trust. I pause, my dreaming spirit hears, Across the wind's unquiet tides, The glimmering music of your spears, ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... way down to our own time. (Our well-beloved M.D. [Monthly Diamond] contributor is too young to be included.) Keats is among the worthies, although he got no farther into the mysteries than the apothecary's counter. Meeting with this interesting series of splendid medicine-men leads us to muse a good deal about the Faculty, and to re-read several good anecdotes about the great symptom-watchers of the past ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... and immeasurable addiction to rollicking fun, to the perpetual "cracking of jokes" (for it amounts to that more definitely than to anything else in the domain of the Comic Muse), is a somewhat curious problem, taken in connection with his remarkable genius and accomplishment as a poet, and his personal character as a solid housekeeping citizen, bent chiefly upon rearing his family in respectability, and paying his way, or, as the Church Catechism has neatly and unimprovably ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... all, Charley, I miss you greatly. Your second in a ballad is not to be replaced; besides, Carlisle Bridge has got low; medical students and young attorneys affect minstrelsy, and actually frequent the haunts sacred to our muse. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... and, indeed, even were they not, they would be still useless. We have determined on the thing, and the sooner we set about it the better. The night wanes, and I have much to see to before daylight. To-morrow I must sleep—sleep—" and for a moment Rivers seemed to muse upon the word sleep, which he thrice repeated; then suddenly proceeding, as if no pause had taken place, he abruptly placed his hand upon the shoulder of Munro, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... few things better calculated to extinguish the poetic fire than this. I regret to be obliged to say that Halicarnassus, by his persistent hostility,—I believe I may say, persecution,—has disseminated his plebeian prejudices over a very large portion of our joint community, and my muse consequently is held in the smallest esteem. Not but that whenever there is a church to be dedicated, or a centennial to be celebrated, or a picnic to be sung, or a fair to be closed, I am called on to furnish the poetry, which, with that sweetness ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... that gave La Mancha more Rich spoils than Jason's; who a point so keen Had to his wit, and happier far had been If his wit's weathercock a blunter bore; The arm renowned far as Gaeta's shore, Cathay, and all the lands that lie between; The muse discreet and terrible in mien As ever wrote on brass in days of yore; He who surpassed the Amadises all, And who as naught the Galaors accounted, Supported by his love and gallantry: Who made the Belianises sing small, And sought renown on Rocinante mounted; Here, underneath this ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... reversed, the skies are more forbidding, the chill is more intense. Only after successive ventures of the same kind is the climax reached, the summit passed, and the vision of sunny plains opened to view. Such experiences are more common to the race than to the individual; the muse of history must note and record them with equanimity, with a buoyancy and hopefulness born of larger knowledge. The movement of civilization in Europe during the latter portion of the eighteenth century was onward and upward, but it was at times not ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... tramplers"—Castlereagh, and the Duke of Wellington, and the Holy Alliance; that he stood for liberty. Another point in his favour was his freedom from cant, his indifference to the pieties and proprieties of the Britannic Muse; that he had the courage of his opinions. Doubtless in a time of trouble he was welcomed as the champion of revolt, but deeper reasons must be sought for an almost exclusive preference for the works of one poet and a comparative indifference ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... what then? Why, next morning I was horrified by seeing that it had struck, and split upon, the petticoat of Euterpe's graven image in the garden, and grimed her as if it were on purpose[45]. Only think of my distress,—and the epigrams that might be engendered on the Muse and her misadventure. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Dorothy clung to her, and they reached the house together. It so happened that the story of the attack had been told to Dorothy's father, and Sir Walter was getting a little fun at the expense of Johnnie and his wrestlings with the muse of poetry. A lively, good-humoured sally, at the moment when Dorothy's trembling limbs carried her over the threshold, evoked a peal of stentorian laughter from Master Morgan's capacious lungs. The tearful maid stood bewildered for an instant, then a roar ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... human nature, love. Chesterton, on the other hand, considers that Browning was the finest love poet of the world. It is real love poetry, because it talks about real people, not ideals; it does not muse of the Prince Charming meeting the Fairy Princess, and forget the devoted wife meeting her husband on the villa doorstep with open arms and a nice dinner in the parlour. Sentiment must be based on reality if it ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... some literary fame were among the conspirators. Rileyef, Bestushef, and others, became the victims of their imprudence. An analogous spirit had some years before banished young Pushkin from the capital. It was evident, that the Russian muse was no longer the good old gossiping lady in French court-dress and hoops, who was ready to drop a humble courtesy to every person of rank and influence; she was no longer the shepherdess who had inspired Dmitrief with his sweet yet tame ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... the Mahometans might surmise, with equal reason, that it portended the destruction of the Infidels. The seventh phenomenon, of one thousand six hundred and eighty, was presented to the eyes of an enlightened age. [80] The philosophy of Bayle dispelled a prejudice which Milton's muse had so recently adorned, that the comet, "from its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war." [81] Its road in the heavens was observed with exquisite skill by Flamstead and Cassini: and the mathematical science of Bernoulli, Newton [8111], and Halley, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Ow'd many years of early liberty. This care was thine when sickness did condemn Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem: That I, if frugal and severe, might stray Where'er I liked; and finally array My temples with the Muse's diadem. Hence, if in freedom I have lov'd the truth, If there be aught of pure, or good, or great, In my past verse; or shall be, in the lays Of higher mood, which now I meditate, It gladdens me, O worthy, short-lived Youth! ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... still present to me, My best thoughts, my country, still linger with thee; My fond heart beats quick, and my dim eyes run o'er, When I muse on the last glance I gave to thy shore. The chill mists of night round thy white cliffs were curl'd, But I felt there was no spot like thee in the world— No home to which memory so fondly would turn, No thought that within me so ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... comes in the merry month of June, when all is green and gay, because the poor muse, whose slave the author is, has been more capricious then the love of a queen, and has mysteriously wished to bring forth her fruit in the time of flowers. No one can boast himself master of this fay. At times, when grave thoughts occupy the mind and grieve the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... Drusus, as he hurried to and fro transmitting orders for his general, might have been fain to draw aside and muse on the strangeness of the night scene. The sky was clear, as almost always in a land where a thunder-storm is often as rare as an eclipse; the stars twinkled out of heavens of soft blackness; the crescent of a new moon hung like a silvered bow out over the harbour, and made ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... very little to say and nothing to record. Along the old tow-path you must be content with a few simple, elemental, mysterious things. To enter into its spirit you must be somewhat of a monastic turn of mind, and have spiritual affiliations, above all, with La Trappe. For the presiding muse of an old canal is Silence; yet, as at La Trappe, a silence far indeed from being a dumb silence, but a silence that contains all speech. My friend and I spoke hardly at all as we walked along, easily obedient to the spirit of ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... Colonel Ney, and in dismissing the ministers who planned the expedition. The president being quoted as authority, the agent of the executive thought it useless to hold the argument any longer, and backed out. The gentlemen of the police knew nothing of bush-fighting, and might have exclaimed with the muse in Romeo, 'Is this poultice for ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... heard of a frog in an opera hat, 'Tis a very old tale of a mouse and a rat, I could sing you another as pleasant, mayhap, Of a kitten that wore a high caul cap; But my muse on a far nobler subject shall drop, Of a bull who got into a china shop, With his right leg, left leg, upper leg, under leg, St. Patrick's day ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... little out at elbows, had marvellous foul linen, and his breeches were not very sound: but he assumed an air of importance, was very courteous, and very solemn. I asked him if he did not sometimes divert himself with the muse: he smiled, and promised, in a whisper, to shew me some chansonettes de sa facon. Meanwhile he composed the requete in my name, which was very pompous, very tedious, and very abject. Such a stile might perhaps be necessary in ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... was talking about Plato, nurse. The last translation I have been making from his immortal work does not please me; but toil—ceaseless toil—the midnight oil, et cetera, may evoke the spirit of the true Muse, and I may be able to put the matter before the great English thinking public in a way worthy ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... recalling the brilliant winter of 1804-5, says, in her Memoirs: "One especially impressive beauty, particularly in the ball-room, was Madame de Canisy, I have often compared her to a muse. It would be impossible for a single face to present a fuller combination of charms than hers: she possessed regular features, a delightful expression, an attractive smile; her hair was silky and glossy. Seldom have I seen anything more charming than Madames de Canisy, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... soft Pity weeps, Bewailing still her favourite's fate; And thence the Muse invokes her aid ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... itself without the Muse, And the four letters tell from whence comes News; From N. E. W. S. the solution's made, Each quarter gives ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... love thee, Beaumont, and thy muse, That unto me dost such religion use! How I do fear myself, that am not worth The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth! At once thou mak'st me happy, and unmak'st; And giving largely to me, more thou takest! What fate is mine, that so itself bereaves? What art ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... such common things— Low souls, weak hearts, I mean—and hast to use, Therefore, such common means and rescuings, That hard we find it, as we sit and muse, To think thou workest in us verily: Bad sea-boats we, and manned with wretched crews— That doubt the ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... and said:— "Oh, by thy father's head! by thine own soul! Art thou not Rustum? speak! art thou not he?" But Rustum eyed askance the kneeling youth, And turn'd away, and spake to his own soul:— "Ah me, I muse what this young fox may mean! False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys. For if I now confess this thing he asks, And hide it not, but say: 'Rustum is here!' He will not yield indeed, nor quit our foes, But he will find some pretext not to fight, And praise my fame, and proffer courteous gifts, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... since Casella spoke such news My heart has lain in a golden muse, Picturing him and her, What ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... pure. Stagnation is death. Turbulent Rome was healthy, but quiescent Rome was soft, feverish, morbid, pathological. Now, take Hamlet—what man ever had more opportunities? Heir to the throne—beauty, power, youth, intellect—all were his! What wrecked him? Why, inaction; he sat down to muse, instead of being up and doing. He wrangled, dawdled, dreamed, followed soothsayers, and consulted mediums until his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... was married to a woman with a great literary reputation as a poet and writer who was idolized by the populace for her passionate advocacy of Ireland's claim to self-government; "Speranza" was regarded by the Irish people as a sort of Irish Muse. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... North are not mirrored with any exactitude in the Elder Edda. Indeed only a travesty of the faith of our ancestors has been preserved in Norse literature. The early poet loved allegory, and his imagination rioted among the conceptions of his fertile muse. "His eye was fixed on the mountains till the snowy peaks assumed human features and the giant of the rock or the ice descended with heavy tread; or he would gaze at the splendour of the spring, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... 'I sit and muse over the chatter of my little children many a time, and almost reach out for them, as though they were here. They are near to my heart, and in the precious keeping ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... is often a vein of comedy in their lives. If we could transport ourselves to Miller's Hotel, Westminster Bridge, on a certain afternoon in the early spring of 1811, we should behold a scene apparently swayed entirely by the Comic Muse. The member for Shoreham, Mr. Timothy Shelley, a handsome, consequential gentleman of middle age, who piques himself on his enlightened opinions, is expecting two guests to dinner—his eldest son, and his son's friend, T. J. Hogg, who have just been sent down from Oxford for a scandalous affair of ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... formed a comely person, In the court of Ceridwen I have done penance; Though little I was seen, placidly received, I was great on the floor of the place to where I was led; I have been a prized defence, the sweet muse the cause, And by law without speech I have been liberated By a smiling black old hag, when irritated Dreadful her claim when pursued: I have fled with vigour, I have fled as a frog, I have fled in the semblance ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... muse, and they were both sitting quite silent when Mrs. Milray came round the corner of the music room in the course of her twentieth or thirtieth compass of the deck, and introduced her lord to her husband and to Clementina. He promptly ignored Milray, and devoted himself to the girl, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... owest many a page, Ay, many that erst grew beneath mine eye, To what was once the loved reality Of this true fairy-land; but I refuse To deck with Art's fantastic wizardry A haunt of Trade. Mine is not Mammon's Muse, She will not sing for hire of Soaps, or ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... times they would laugh, at times they would chide, and then set him at nought. So he went to his room to pray for them, as well as to nurse his own grief. He would go, too, into the woods to read and muse, and thus for some weeks ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... on the various proofs still extant, the royal preacher expatiates on the various proofs of religion; but he dwells with peculiar complacency on the Sibylline verses, and the fourth eclogue of Virgil. Forty years before the birth of Christ, the Mantuan bard, as if inspired by the celestial muse of Isaiah, had celebrated, with all the pomp of oriental metaphor, the return of the Virgin, the fall of the serpent, the approaching birth of a godlike child, the offspring of the great Jupiter, who should expiate the guilt of human kind, and govern the peaceful universe ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Lyn Valley climbed to my feet, and I sat down in the shade of the outermost fringe of trees to eat my lunch, and dream and muse, and doze away the first hot hours of the afternoon. I sat looking down over the valley; below me and to right and left the green spikes of the larches were aflutter in the wind; before me rose ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... to others, I will hasten to the Times of greater Politeness, and desire that room may be made, and attention given to a Person of no less Wit than Honour, the Earl of Surrey, who at least had all the Elegancy of a gentle Muse, that may deserve the Praises of ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... Goldenes Dachl. He forgot his hunger and his pain, seeing the sun shine on all that gold and the curious painted galleries under it. He thought it was real, solid gold. Real gold laid out on a house-roof, and the people all so poor! Findelkind began to muse, and wonder why everybody did not climb up there and take a tile off and be rich. But perhaps it would be wicked. Perhaps God put the roof there with all that gold to prove people. Findelkind got bewildered. If God did such a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... fancy, and never a farthing challenged. Even while he was driving me, I had begun to find my heart go out to Mr. Henry; no doubt, partly in pity, he was a man so palpably unhappy. He would fall into a deep muse over our accounts, staring at the page or out of the window; and at those times the look of his face, and the sigh that would break from him, awoke in me strong feelings of curiosity and commiseration. One day, I remember, we were late upon some business in the steward's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Muse a gravely jocund note in his "Seasons' Comfort." He, too, of the four fellow-versifiers shows the greater aptitude for experiments, though it may perhaps be felt that his touch is nowhere quite so sure, nor his artistic feeling so ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... Pen responded at once, and sat in breathless enchanted silence through all the conversations and melodramatic situations of the mediocre performance. When the curtain went down he felt that he now had a subject to inspire his Muse forever. He quitted the theatre in a state of intense excitement, and rode homeward in a state of numb ecstasy. Notwithstanding his sentimental mood, Pen was so normal in mind and body that he slept as soundly as ever, but when he awoke he felt himself to be many years older than yesterday. He ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the recitative, and the choruses. In order to avoid the conventional in singing, Wagner falls into another convention,—that of not singing at all. He subordinates the voice to articulate speech, and for fear lest the muse should take flight he clips her wings; so that his works are rather symphonic dramas than operas. The voice is brought down to the rank of an instrument, put on a level with the violins, the hautboys, and the drums, and treated ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... heart, the taste of the honey of the remote moon comes to her lips; but it comes, alas! with the bitter taste of several years of matrimonial prose. In every married woman there is a poet disillusioned of his muse. Hence the Byronic smile on her face at the sight of the happiness shining in the eyes ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... retorts and crucibles were forever discarded.... He became enamoured of the woods, a fancy which soon gained full control over the course of his literary pursuits.... He resolved to confine his homage to the muse of history.... At the age of eighteen (born in 1823) the plan (to whose execution he gave his long life) was, in its most essential features, formed. His idea was clear before him, yet attended with unpleasant ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... Melpomene, is tragedy; No. 5, Terpsichore, is dance and song. Now comes Apollo with his quiver full of arrows. He is the god of the hunt and twin brother to Diana, the goddess of hunt; also he is god of music and poetry. No. 6 is Polyhymnia, muse of hymn-music; No. 7, Euterpe, is song poetry; No. 8, Thalia, is comedy, and No. 9, Urania, muse ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... any other poet that has lived," he replied. "His was the most ethereal and delicate muse that ever consented to be tied down to earth. But, mademoiselle, you do not wish to examine me as to my taste in poetry. You have some other questions to put ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... the conceit and humour of the situation. With the utmost dignity, and with the quizzical, pinched brow of the labouring muse, halting ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Vivian. This was what your strong, solid, sensible fellows always came to; they paid, in this particular, a larger tribute to pure fancy than the people who were supposed habitually to cultivate that muse. Blanche Evers was what the French call an article of fantasy, and Gordon had taken a pleasure in finding her deliciously useless. He cultivated utility in other ways, and it pleased and flattered him to feel that he could afford, morally speaking, to have a kittenish wife. He ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Mrs. McElwin and her daughter were gone on a visit to friends and would be absent several weeks. Lyman did not think to disguise his concern. With an abruptness that made the cups totter in the saucers he shoved himself back from the table and fell into a deep muse. Why should the girl have gone away just at that particular time? Was it a blow aimed at him? He had wanted to tell her something. It was in the nature of a confession, not startling, not, as he now viewed it, beyond a commonplace acknowledgment, and he wondered why he should have suppressed ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read |
